Penn Satire, Since 1899

How to Fake Liberal Guilt

It seems that being politically active and informed is now an integral part of student life. Cheerful apathy is falling by the wayside in favor of an annoying do-gooder ethic. When the hell did this happen? Now I can’t check out that kickass Facebook photo album of my “Golf Pros and Tennis Hos” party without negotiating the gauntlet of causes and awareness committees wanting me to join their group, buy their bracelet, or poke Dennis Hastert. Darfur’s genocides and the impending global warming crisis are the most irritating culprits. I can’t relate to those problems. They’d never try to genocide people from America (we have the Second Amendment) and global warming is just God’s way of telling us that we’re doing a good job of not getting in the way of economic progress. Thumbs up, God: here’s to better living through science!

But that’s not going to cut it when that Penn Dems floozy starts talking to you at the jungle juice. You’re going to want to be able to fake yourself some liberal guilt. In this spirit, I offer this prepackaged rant: just pick one of the three options whenever you come to a bracket to give it some variety:

“Oh, yeah…I just read an article about [the minimum wage/ drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge/ the passing of Barbaro] in my favorite source of information, [The Times/ The Daily Kos/ this really cool kid in my management 100 group who plays ultimate Frisbee and has dreadlocks even though he’s white]. Things are so messed up. It really goes to show how lucky we [rich people/ white people/ rich, white people] have it. We never need to think about [starving/ finding a doctor/ who would win in a pudding wrestling match between Kitty Genovese and Laci Peterson]…

So many people our age are only concerned with stupid, materialistic, transient crap like [LaCoste/ OCR/ their dialysis appointments] and just don’t see the big picture. I mean, out in the real world, people just like you and I are suffering under [dictators/ American imperialism/ Penn’s freshman dining plan]. There are so few people willing to stand up for justice, it really speaks poorly of our generation. I’m trying my best to get involved in [student activism/ minority enfranchisement/ a romantic relationship with my philosophy TA] but it’s really depressing when no one our age really seems to care…

But whenever I feel like giving up, I think of the inspirational words of [MLK/ my mom/ Gloria Estefan], who always encouraged me to [never give up/ choke a bitch/ reach…higher]. I draw strength and inspiration from that and channel it into exposing [Dubya’s grammatical errors/ corporate greed/ myself…for PETA]

So yeah—it’s tough out there being the only person who is really standing up to the establishment for [the environment/ social progress/ child molester rights], I find it immensely rewarding because at the end of the day, I know I’m [doing the right thing/ trying way too hard/ staving off nihilism for just a little while longer].”

Try this out next time you’re hanging out with the other hip hippies and let me know how it goes by clicking my email address at the top of this article. If this gets you friends or laid, I might even give it a spin myself.